Students at the University of Pennsylvania Law School will
have even more opportunities to advocate for human rights and
asylum protection, thanks to a gift from Skadden, Arps, Slate,
Meagher & Flom and its partners. The gift honors Robert C.
Sheehan, L’69, who recently ended his 15-year tenure as executive
partner of the law firm and assumed a new role as the firm’s
pro bono partner.

Penn Law is using the $1 million gift to create the Sheehan
Asylum/Human Rights Project. The school will recruit a fulltime
professor to guide students as they work on asylum cases in
partnership with local providers of legal services to immigrants.
The Sheehan Project will be part of Penn Law’s three-year-old
Transnational Legal Clinic, where students work with clients
across cultures, languages, borders and legal systems on human
rights litigation and advocacy. It is one of nine clinics in Penn
Law’s Gittis Center for Clinical Legal Education, which offers
sophisticated instruction and legal experience in civil practice,
child advocacy, mediation and criminal defense through its clinics
and professional externships.

Sheehan, who was executive partner from 1994 to April
2009 and previously founded Skadden’s Financial Institutions
Mergers & Acquisitions Group, oversaw the firm’s global expansion
and spearheaded community service initiatives, including
pro bono work. From 2001 to 2008, the average number of
pro bono hours for Skadden attorneys nearly doubled, and the
percentage of lawyers who contribute at least 20 hours a week
increased from 38 percent to 65 percent. The firm also launched,
and continues to support, the Skadden Fellowship Foundation,
which provides two-year fellowships to at least 25 very talented
young lawyers every year so they may pursue careers in public
interest law. With the 2009 class announced earlier this year, the
foundation has supported 564 fellows over the past 21 years,
and more than 90 percent of them have pursued careers in public
interest career after their fellowship tenures.